Orange to be exclusive carrier of HTC Touch HD

Orange is going to be the exclusive carrier of the HTC Touch HD handset in the UK, the operator said yesterday.

Orange said it would be carrying the handset from "early November". The Touch HD has garnered a degree of interest for its use of a 97mm (3.8-inch), 480x800-pixel, widescreen WVGA touchscreen. The operator is claiming this will be well-suited to various applications, including Web surfing, streaming mobile television and viewing photos taken on the handset's 5-megapixel camera.

The quad-band Touch HD uses the Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional operating system together with HTC's TouchFlo 3D user interface skin, and has GPS, HSDPA, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity. It has a 1,350mAh battery, and HTC claims it can provide up to 310 minutes of talk time.

Competing handsets include Apple's iPhone 3G and the BlackBerry Storm, both of which have touchscreens.

Orange will be selling the Touch HD for £79.99 on an 18-month, £40-per-month contract, although it says it may revise prices next year. The contract provides a maximum of only 250MB worth of data usage per month within the bundle, whereas most other operators have limits of a gigabyte or more per month.